Code of Vengeance: The Complete Collection, page 16
Yet the desire was there, steadily growing.
Clive’s voice was weak again. “Please. Tell my kids I love—”
In front of Br00-S, Clive's eyes rolled back in their sockets. The action focused Br00-S’ attention, and he noticed that the businessman's vitals were all over the place. His heart rate was over two hundred and fifty. Something was dreadfully wrong with the man in front of him.
Eight-and-a-half seconds after he came to that conclusion, Clive Proskey was dead.
Chapter Fourteen
When Nat woke up, their room was empty. That fact was a little surprising. In her mind, she still thought of robots as being loud and clunky. Even though Br00-S had disproved that notion several times, she still had a hard time imagining him sneaking about. And yet he left without her so much as being even slightly disturbed in her sleep.
It was the first time he had left in a few days. Wisely, he had laid low after the aborted attempt to harm Clive at a Little League game.
Although she was a little disappointed the robot had left without her knowledge, she didn't think too much of it. Their partnership, such as it was, was fraying at the edges. While she would not trust the robot, and was sometimes even nervous about what he might do, he was no more trusting of her. Despite all the help and assistance she had given him, the robot still acted on his own, and then she had to figure out what he was doing.
Even more frustrating was the knowledge that she still didn’t understand Br00-S’ motivations. Did robots even need motivation? Was this entire adventure simply a mix-up in a robot’s programming?
For her purposes, Nat didn't really care, and she had to keep reminding herself of that.
Her lack of knowledge nagged at her. Why did the robot do what he was doing?
She fought the urge to run to her computer screens. She had been staring at monitors for the past several days, whether to help Br00-S find more information or to conduct her own research. If she kept sitting hunched over like that, she wouldn’t be able to move in a few more days.
Instead, Nat unrolled a yoga mat, stretching and focusing on her breath as she moved from pose to pose.
The practice was one she had picked up with one of her foster families, a young hippie couple whose beliefs bordered those of Sapiens: that humans were the pinnacle of evolution, and that technology had gone too far.
Nat had tried meditation more times than she could count, but it never worked for her. She could never focus on her breath long enough to feel like it made a difference, and her desire for stimulation of any sort kept her from developing a regular practice.
When she discovered yoga, that all changed. The gentle movements combined with the focus on the breath allowed her to slip into the state she assumed was very similar to that of meditation. She'd gotten hooked, and practiced whenever she got a chance. At one point, she’d even considered pursuing one of the hundreds of certifications that existed to become an instructor.
She was in cobra pose when the alarm went off in the room.
They were Br00-S’ alarms, not her own.
Nat wasn't sure exactly what the alarms represented, but she figured it was far better to be safe than sorry. Moving quickly, she packed up all her belongings in her backpack and dug out both the robot stun gun and her Taser.
Suddenly, the two weapons seemed woefully insufficient. How would she be able to hold off anyone? She wasn’t trained for this.
She didn’t give herself time to answer the question. When she first arrived at Br00-S’ hideout, she had looked his place over closely and found several hiding places.
Not yet, though. She wasn't sure what the alarm signified, so before she panicked she needed more data.
Keeping her backpack on, ready to run at any moment, Nat snuck towards the front entrance. She had turned two corners when she saw several lights dancing across the walls of the next turn.
Shit.
People, and more than one.
Her mind immediately went to a worst-case scenario. Proskey Enterprises had figured out where they were. They had sent a team.
Or worse, maybe Bryce had somehow figured out who she was and where she lived and had sent a SWAT team after her.
Either way it wasn't good, and she was trapped. To the best of her knowledge there was only the one entrance or exit, and it was currently being swarmed by people searching for her or Br00-S.
Silently, Nat turned and ran back to their hideout. When she entered the main room, she glanced around to make sure everything she owned was gone. Fortunately, Br00-S left little behind. Most of the work he did was in his own head, and so all he had was a few cables.
If they found her, it was all over for her, but at least their data was safe.
Nat considered the different hiding spaces. Most of them wouldn’t be enough. There were several people looking, so she needed to find a truly invisible shelter, something no one would search for.
Of the places she knew, only one fit the bill.
Nat made her way in that direction, running towards an opening between several of the wiring lines. The gap was narrow, and she had to take off her backpack and push it through the gap first and then slide behind it. On the other side, there was a small crevice. By moving her backpack a little to one side, she was able to squeeze her way in. It would have to be good enough. Anyone who put their flashlight in and really looked around would see her, but even a somewhat thorough investigation wouldn’t reveal her presence.
Nat fought against her pounding heart and her shallow breaths. The easiest thing to do was focus on her breath, try to calm it down. She practiced as though she was doing yoga, breathing deeply through her nose, holding the breath, and then slowly releasing it.
Eventually her heart, which felt as though it would burst out of her chest, slowed down.
She saw the lights first, several flashlights dancing around the room that had been as close to home as anything else over the past few weeks.
The lights were quickly followed by the quiet sound of rubber-soled footsteps as they came down the hallway.
Nat watched plenty of movies. She had seen soldiers clear a building before. But she had never seen it in real life, when she was the target.
Despite the risk to herself, Nat couldn't help but peek over the wiring conduit she was hiding behind, watching the way the soldiers moved as they entered the new space.
All of them wore the same body armor she had seen in the video of Br00-S breaking into Proskey Enterprises. They all wore the same bulky, black ballistic vests, with black helmets and digital visors that looked like ski goggles.
They entered and fanned out, working in teams of two, one going high and one going low. Each one checked corners and gave verbal confirmation to the others. Nat was struck by the similarity to a choreographed dance team, the security detail moving with a deadly, focused grace.
The room that had been her hideout only had a few corners, so it was cleared in less than five seconds. Nat released the breath she didn't even realize she was holding in.
Fortunately, no one seemed interested in searching for her. One team began a perimeter search, looking for anything interesting, while the others moved towards the entrance and a single pair pulled out equipment from some of the bulky pockets on the back of their vests.
As far as she could tell, there were only the six guards. Not that it would matter. Six guards were still far too many to get away from on her own, but she wondered if there were more guarding the entrance to the alley. Regardless, she wasn’t escaping until they left. She settled in for a long wait.
Her attention was drawn to the two guards setting up equipment in the center of the room.
Nat recognized most of the equipment. Laptops, connectors, and a wireless scanner designed to pick up any traffic entering or leaving the area.
Cursing to herself, Nat quickly but silently reached for the phone in her pocket. If they started snooping for wireless signals, they’d pick hers up in a moment.
Without even having to look, Nat turned off the phone, breathing a shallow sigh of relief.
Then she realized that the pair searching the perimeter was closing in on her hiding place.
Moving her head a fraction of an inch at a time, Nat squirmed in the dark, trying to shift her body ever so gently towards the conduit whose shadow she was hiding in.
As the footsteps and lights came closer, Nat held her breath, sweat dripping from her bangs into her eyes.
The lights from the flashlight played across the wall behind her.
Her heart, which had once been calm, started pounding in her chest once more, and again she wondered if it was possible to hear a heartbeat. It was all she could think about.
As the seconds passed, each one an eternity of silent purgatory, Nat thought that she couldn’t hold her breath much longer, and she would have to explosively exhale and give away her hiding place.
The lights moved on, away from her.
Nat exhaled slowly through her nose. She was safe, at least for a few more minutes.
She didn’t dare risk poking her head over the conduit anymore. One wrong glance, one stray flashlight beam, and she would be caught. Instead she focused on listening to what was happening in the room.
As her heartbeat slowed, Nat heard two distinct voices. One was a man's and one was a woman's. She was certain the voices were coming from the two guards in the center of the room.
“Are you getting any information?”
There was no verbal response, and Nat debated risking discovery so that she could pick up on their nonverbal communication. It wasn't worth the risk.
The woman responded, “This is definitely the place. The power outlet matches the model that we suspect, and this data plug is reporting a lot of information passing through it.”
“Any sign of the girl who’s helping him?”
“No. Although we suspect she’s wherever he is, so that’s not surprising.”
“So we wait?”
“We wait.”
Nat swore.
Nat wasn't sure how long she'd been hiding. She didn’t dare turn on her phone to find out how late it was. Time was a relative phenomenon, and that had never been clearer to her than at that moment. It felt like she had been waiting for hours. In reality, maybe it had only been a few minutes. There was no way of knowing how accurate her guess was.
The first sign she got that something was afoot was the sound of all six individuals moving together, several deep intakes of breath, and the sound of weapons being readied.
Nat’s heart raced. There was only one possible explanation. Br00-S was back.
Her suspicion was confirmed a few moments later. She heard a deep voice command all the troops. “Defensive positions. Be ready.”
There was a shuffling as the soldiers got to their positions.
Again, Nat felt an overwhelming sensation of being hopeless and trapped. Her little Taser would do nothing against the body armor those soldiers wore, and there was still only the one way out.
Fortunately, it didn't seem like she was alone. From her hiding position she could hear the nervous, heavy breathing of the soldiers as they waited.
The seconds ticked by, one after the other.
She figured the guards’ entire attention would be on the entrance to the room, but it was still a risk to look. She couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. Moving a millimeter at a time, she raised her head until she could see just over the wiring she hid behind. The six guards were separated into three pairs, each covering the entrance from a different angle.
She screamed when the wall behind the guards exploded in a shower of sheetrock.
Br00-S stomped through the debris, moving with the surety and grace of a machine with a clear purpose. With three heavy steps he strode directly towards the center pair of soldiers, who were turning around and trying to bring their weapons to bear.
Br00-S crashed into them at a full sprint, grabbing each of their heads with one of his hands. They came off the floor and Br00-S stopped between them, shoving each of them to the side and toward one of the remaining pairs.
The room came alive as automatic weapons opened fire in the confined space.
Nat knew she was screaming, but she couldn’t hear herself over the sound of the gunshots. Bullets struck the wiring conduit she was hiding behind, and debris from the wall behind her cut into her arm and back as bullets tore into it inches above her head.
The lights in the room suddenly went off, and all Nat could see was the flashlights of the soldiers whipping around in terror and the occasional burst of flame as a gun fired.
More gunfire erupted, followed by the heavy thuds of bodies hitting the floor.
Bullets that struck the walls made a different sound than the ones that found Br00-S. The ones in the walls made soft thuds and thunks. The ones that skipped off of Br00-S sounded as though somebody was striking guitar chords with too much force.
Then the room fell silent.
Was she dead? Was this the nothingness that awaited her? Her ears were ringing, but she couldn’t see anything, and she couldn’t feel anything.
One by one, her senses returned to her. She felt the cold concrete against her side as she lay down. She smelled the cordite from the rounds that had been fired. She was alive.
Nat didn't move, her arms covering her face and head, her body wrapped into as tight of a fetal position as she could manage in the confined space. She wasn't going to give anyone a target, and if Br00-S had lost, she hoped that her screams hadn't been heard.
Fear gripped her heart when a strong hand reached down and picked her up. Without looking, she swung wildly, yelping in pain as her fist struck something hard and metallic.
Br00-S.
She opened her eyes. Br00-S was standing there in front of her, his hoodie torn through and through with bullet holes that let in the light from the flashlights behind them.
He blinked, and the emergency lights in the room came back on, illuminating an unreal scene.
The six guards were scattered about, limbs at odd angles. Nat focused on one or two of them and thought she saw subtle signs of movement. She wasn't sure if it was something real or imagined, but she didn’t have any desire to find out more. She had seen enough.
Br00-S spoke first. “We need to get out of here.”
All Nat could do was nod. A part of her mind recognized that her body was in shock, but she just couldn't get her brain to fire the way she was used to. She was taking in details one at a time, coming to conclusions slowly, as though her very thoughts were trying to claw their way out of the mud.
She followed Br00-S, unquestioning.
Br00-S brought them out through the front door, where Nat glanced at two more slowly moving bodies. That was how the soldiers had known the robot was coming. For all the good it had done them.
He carried her gently out of the alleyway and a block away to where her van was parked.
She didn’t question the fact that he knew about the van. She wasn’t even able to lodge a protest when the doors opened to his touch. As paranoid as she had been for the past few years, right now she just couldn’t summon the energy to care.
Br00-S pulled out the bed and set her down gently, kneeling next to her as he looked around and found a first aid kit.
Nat frowned. She wasn't hurt, and he was a robot.
Moving slowly and gently, the robot rolled up her sleeves, and she grimaced as the first bits of pain tore through the comforting haze of the shock.
That feeling of pain led to fear. She’d been shot. She was going to die.
Nat jerked, trying to get a look at her injury, but Br00-S’ hand was firm, giving her some freedom but keeping her in place.
“You’ll be fine. You’ve got a few cuts that are deep. I want to clean them out and bandage them, but you’re not in any danger.”
In her hazy mind, that was the line she latched on to. She wasn’t in any danger. As long as she was with Br00-S, she was safe.
Nat didn’t play the damsel-in-distress game, but she had never witnessed anything like what she had just seen. Even being chased, she felt like she had some semblance of control, some amount of power over the situation. But against six armed and highly-trained guards, what good were her hacking skills?
She closed her eyes and relaxed, feeling a momentary wave of relief wash over her. Br00-S’ hands were as gentle as any she had ever felt, and so long as her eyes were closed, she could almost believe he was real.
And wasn’t he? Their partnership hadn’t been on strong ground, and he certainly could have found another hideout with a bit of searching. The city was filled with holes, and one just needed to know where to look. But he had come back for her.
For her.
She couldn’t even remember the last time someone had done something for her.
Suddenly, she regretted not helping him earlier, when he was breaking out of Proskey Enterprises. She had done wrong by him.
“Nat?”
She needed a few seconds to realize he was speaking to her.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, I know you’re in shock. But I was asking if you would mind if I drove the van around. I don’t think it’s safe for us to be too close to here.”
At the moment, she couldn’t think of much that she cared less about. If he wanted to drive the van, he could take her all the way to the border for all she cared. She was safe with him. “Feel free.”
With that, she closed her eyes, her last waking memory that of the robot’s cool hand on her forehead.
Chapter Fifteen
Bryce couldn't remember the last time he had felt this way about a case. Maybe back in the 2030s when he pursued his first real serial killer. In his entire career, he had only gone after two, but that first one had changed the course of his life. And yet, while this situation also felt like it would change the direction of his life, the serial killer had been something different.
The killer worked alone, finding vulnerable men and women on the streets and killing them with surgical precision. The victims were chosen at random, which made the suspect hard to find. Most murders were solved by looking at a web of relationships. Motive pointed to your suspects within the web, and it was the job of the detective to eliminate those suspects until only the guilty party remained.
